Secret Santa
by landslide-state-of-mind
Summary: The Bellas are doing Secret Santa, and Beca draws Aubrey. She wants to get something meaningful, maybe show the older woman how she feels even just a little. (Slight Mitchseny stuff toward the end.)


_It's time for holiday fics! Hooray! Have a Mitchsen holiday fic. Love you all._

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><p>Ashley had suggested it, originally. Since they were all in the same boat – college students with little income available – it might be better to have a Secret Santa instead of buying gifts for all of their fellow Bellas. The suggestion was welcomed enthusiastically, and Aubrey quickly set the parameters. She wrote their names on slips of paper and stuffed them into Cynthia Rose's hat.<p>

"Okay," she said, passing around the hat. "If you pick your own name put it back in, and no trading. You have until the night of our Bella break up dinner to leave your gift for your Bella under the tree here and we'll exchange then. Any questions?" There were, of course, no questions, because nobody questioned the organizational skills of Aubrey, even during the festive season.

Beca reached into the hat, hoping she might get Chloe, or Amy, or Cynthia Rose. She would at least be confident in buying them something they'd like. Anyone else and she'd be in trouble. Sure, there was always the option to buy the fail-safe gift card or bath product, but Beca liked to give presents that meant a little more than that. Her childhood Christmases hadn't always been exuberant affairs – it was a bit hard to celebrate the time of year that reminded her of her father driving away for good as she pressed her seven year old face up against the frosted window – but she and her mother had always gone out of their way to give personal gifts.

Her fingers closed over a slip of paper and she unfurled it just enough to see the name inside. Great. _Aubrey._ It wasn't that she didn't like the girl, because she did – maybe a little more than she should have… okay maybe she liked her an awful lot – but she didn't know her in the way she would like. Aubrey was the only person who was more guarded than she was. Literally all she knew about her was that she was organized to the extreme, Chloe's best friend, very passionate about the Bellas and 90s ladies music and she was super smart. She was going to have to do some work to figure out what to buy her.

Luckily, Chloe invited her over to their shared apartment regularly. A lot of the time Aubrey wouldn't join them, preferring to study or read or do god knows what in her room. But this particular night was a Christmas movie marathon sleepover – something she'd had to beg and bribe Beca to partake in – and Aubrey was almost as excited as Chloe for the occasion. Beca had relented eventually, after being promised ice cream, plenty of snacks and the takeout of her choice (Chinese food) and showed up ready to watch hours of holiday themed flicks.

Aubrey answered wearing a Santa hat, which made Beca bite back a smirk but Aubrey just smirked right back and said that Chloe insisted the three of them would be wearing the hats all night. When Beca discovered that this was the truth, she fought hard, complaining that it wasn't part of the original deal that she'd have to partake in festive headgear. Chloe got her to cave by promising to cook her breakfast in the morning, and she took the red hat and jammed it on her head.

"You look adorable," Chloe said. She glared at Chloe, and Aubrey started laughing.

"You're a grumpy little elf," she teased.

"Oh go fuck yourself," she snarked, admittedly with a smile. Chloe decided she'd call for food and they'd wait for it to arrive before they started the first movie so they wouldn't be interrupted. While they waited she pulled out all of the snacks she bought. It ended up being enough to last for a ten day marathon. But Chloe had brought her Twizzlers even though she didn't like them, so she was happy.

"I love Twizzlers," Aubrey said, pinching one. Chloe wrinkled her nose and put the last dish down. It was a plate of gingerbread men decorated in icing and candy.

"Did you make these?" Beca asked.

"No way," Chloe said. "I bought them. They're super cute and they're delicious as well."

"My grandmother used to make these elaborate gingerbread houses every year," Aubrey said. "They were incredible. It was the highlight of my Christmas, going to her house to see what she'd built that year. Then she passed away. Mom thought it was a waste of time to learn how to make them, and I was too young to learn when she got sick so the tradition kind of just died with Grams too." That sparked a thought in Beca. She still had to get a present for Aubrey for Secret Santa. She'd never baked gingerbread before or built a gingerbread house but she'd be willing to learn. Maybe. She tapped a quick text to Sheila as Chloe went to pay the delivery guy.

_Do you know how to make a gingerbread house or where I could learn to build one?_

_I know how, but you'll have to tell me the story behind this request tomorrow._

Beca sent back a thank you and turned her attention to all the food, and the first of their holiday themed movies for the night. Chloe said it was called Elf and was the funniest Christmas movie of all time.

They managed to get three movies in before they called it a night, and Beca admitted that they weren't that bad. Sure they were still formulaic and predictable, but they were still enjoyable enough, which she made both Chloe and Aubrey swear not to tell Jesse she'd said.

She hung around the following morning, long enough for Chloe to make her the promised breakfast of pancakes, and then headed to her dad's house to see Sheila.

"So, a gingerbread house?" Sheila asked. "I didn't picture you for the gingerbread house type."

"I'm not," Beca said. "But Aubrey is. And we're doing this Secret Santa thing for Bellas and I wanted to get her something that was personal, you know? And she was saying last night that her grandmother used to build them every year when she was younger but she died and her mom never learned and she never learned. I feel like it'd be a nice gesture."

"So you want to build a gingerbread house for a girl you've admitted drives you crazy because her grandmother used to do the same thing?" Sheila said. Beca blushed a little and sighed.

"Yes," she said. "Can you help me?"

"Yes, of course I can," she said. "It's just… never mind. It's going to take time, you know that right?"

"That's fine," Beca said. "And let me know what I need to buy."

"I'll come with you," Sheila said. "We have to start by building the slabs."

It took a solid few hours of baking and cutting, swearing as the house crumbled and then starting again and rebuilding, but Beca ended up crafting a nice looking house. Sheila had managed to pry out of her the fact that she was attracted to Aubrey even though they drove each other nuts, but she hadn't teased or talked about it relentlessly. The house miraculously held together overnight, and they were ready to decorate. Sheila said the decorating was easier, if you made a plan and had a steady hand.

Surprisingly, Beca did in fact have a steady hand and did very well with the icing and decorating. Sheila had remarked that it might be due to all the DJing and mixing. She also spent a bit of time practicing her icing skills on some leftover gingerbread. She wanted it to be, well, not perfect, but she wanted it to be good so it was at least reminiscent of the ones Aubrey's grandmother used to make.

When it was done, she surveyed it with some amount of pride, and nausea due to the amount of candy she'd consumed during the process. Sheila was also proud, and glad they'd done something together over the holidays. She might have also confessed that she wanted to build the house for Aubrey because she wanted the gift to be meaningful. Now she was left with the problem of how to get it to the auditorium without being spotted. They ended up wrapping it in cellophane, and then putting the package into a box so it wouldn't be visible. Beca ended up dropping it into the auditorium late one night after a radio station shift, because she was sure nobody else would be around that time of night.

On the night of their Bellas break up dinner, Fat Amy was elected to play Santa for the evening. She donned a hat and gifts were doled out, the entire group watching as the girls each opened their presents. Beca received a pair of studs that looked like vinyl records and three miniature watercolor paintings of music related imagery. She knew Jessica was her Santa, she was the only one of them who had any artistic skill at all. They were really quite good.

"Alright, this one is for Aubrey," Amy said. "And the tag says to please be gentle because it's fragile." Aubrey carefully took the box and set it down on the top of the piano. Beca watched nervously as she lifted the lid, and promptly burst into tears at the sight of the decorated house.

"Whoa," Cynthia Rose said, looking into the box. "What's wrong? I think it looks awesome."

"It does," Aubrey sniffled. "It's amazing." Beca let out a sigh internally. She liked it. The rest of the gifts were dispersed, and they began celebrating. Beca made sure to tell Jessica how much she liked her gift, the quieter girl not even denying that she was her Santa.

About an hour later as the girls were getting well and truly festive thanks to a holiday cocktail Stacie had invented, Aubrey tapped her on the shoulder, and dragged her away from the group and toward the gingerbread house. It was now free of its box but still wrapped in the cellophane.

"You made this?" Aubrey asked.

"Sheila helped me," Beca admitted. "But yeah. How'd you know?"

"Well, only you and Chloe know about Grams gingerbread house. And the last time Chloe baked she almost burned the apartment down," Aubrey said. "It wasn't hard."

"Oh. Well… Merry Christmas." The blonde regarded her for a moment, and then threw her arms around her.

"Beca, I love it," she whispered. Beca could tell she was close to tears again. "As soon as I saw it I felt like a little girl again. Thank you." Beca's arms were resting comfortably around her body.

"You're welcome, Aubrey." The blonde pulled back, now looking nervous.

"Beca?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think you know get quite how much this means to me," she said. "The relationship I had with Grams was everything to me. She was who I found solace in when my parents were being hard and unrelenting. Her house was the one place I felt like I could be a little girl in. And you've given me – no, you built me a piece of her. I don't even know how I can begin to make this up to you."

"You don't have to make it up to me," Beca said. "It was a gift. I'm just really glad that you like it. That's honestly all I need, to see you this happy and know that I put that smile there." Aubrey took her hand.

"Let me at least take you out for dinner sometime?" Aubrey said.

"Sure," Beca said. "That'd be great. The blonde planted a kiss on her cheek and squeezed her hand before disappearing. Beca could feel herself blushing and her fingers reached for the spot Aubrey had just kissed. Then she smiled and rejoined her friends for some Christmas themed fun.


End file.
